Category: Gadget

BRICWAVE has unveiled a new portable smartphone storage companion they have created which offers users storage, portable charging and cable all in one handy pocket sized device called the Xpress-PRO.

The Xpress-PRO can be equipped with up to 256GB of onboard storage and includes fast charging technology, allowing you to top-up your smartphone quickly and efficiently when required.

What’s the promotional video below to learn more about its aluminium outer case, internal specifications and inspiration. Its developers explain a little more about the Xpress-PRO.

There are certain situations that can leave a person in a very difficult situation, involving technology. Two of the most annoying, in an ever connected world, is needing a storage solution with none available and having a smartphone or tablet go dead with no way to charge them. We came up with an ingenious solution, the Xpress-PRO™ that helps users to manage data and to stay connected with full power all the time. It is an ultimate mobile assistant to save time and to promote maximum convenience.

Xpress-PRO is roughly the size of a credit card and is made of high-strength aluminum alloy chosen for its long-lasting durability. With a memory capacity of up to 256GB, it assures that no data gets lost and charges your devices faster via Lightning or Micro-USB connections. One device is “good enough” to replace separate hard drive, charging battery, and cables.

Are you carrying too many gadgets to stay connected or having too much data to handle? Or, are you juggling too many things while traveling and finding it a real struggle to try and not leave anything behind? It is quite embarrassing to be traveling with multiple tech gadgets and eventually getting stuck at the security screening gate due to increased security concerns nowadays. Of course, it is even more frustrating when your device is jammed with pictures, video, music files and email data, which leaves you out of memory space. Yes, you can easily delete them, but it’s not an easy thing to decide which part of your memories or entertainment you will erase.

The Xpress-PRO smartphone storage system is now available to back by the Kickstarter crowdfunding website with early bird pledges starting from just $69 for the 32GB version. For more details jump over to Kickstarter via the link below.

We had previously heard the the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 would come with 6GB of RAM, although the handset has now been spotted on the Antutu benchmarks with 4GB of RAM.

A Galaxy Note 7 with the model number SM-N930V recently got benchmarked in AnTuTu, the handset was listed with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, previous rumors had suggested a Snapdragon 823 would be powering the device.

Other specifications listed on AnTuTu include a Quad HD resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels, the handset is expected to come with a 5.7 inch display.

The new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is also listed with a 5 megapixel front camera for Selfies and a 13 megapixel rear camera for photos and video. The device is listed with 64GB of storage and Android 6.0.1.

We have also heard previously that the handset will come with an Iris scanner for improved security. Samsung are rumored to be announcing their new Note 7 at a press event on the second of August and the handset is expected to go on sale next month.

Barclays is launching a new contactless payment device in the UK that lets you turn your watch into a contactless payment device, the Barclays bPay Loop.

The Barclays bPay Loop is designed to fit in your watch or fitness band it will let you make contactless payments in the UK up to £30, the £30 is the current contactless limit in the UK.

Turn your watch or fitness band into a way to pay, simply slide loop on to any strap up to 22mm wide with an open buckle. Discreetly hidden or a little more out-there, the loop can be fitted in any way you choose.

The bPay loop is linked to the bPay secure digital wallet and can be used to make payments for £30 and under at over 400,000 locations, across the UK. Link loop to the bPay mobile app to seamlessly track your spending, top up on the go using most major debit or credit cards and update your account settings whenever you need to.

You can find out more details about the Barclays bPay Loop at the link below. The device costs £20 and you will also need to download an app to your mobile to use it.

It looks like Google has plans to launch some new Nexus smart watches as the company is apparently working on two new devices.

According to a recent report from Android Police these new devices will launch under the Google Nexus brand, so we could see them with the new Nexus handsets later this year.

The two devices will apparently come with Google Assistant built in and each model will feature slightly different hardware.

One Nexus smartwatch will appatently feature a sporty design and will come with LTE, GPS and a heart rate monitor. The other device is rumored to be smaller and will not come with mobile connectivity or GPS.

As soon as we get some mroe details about these two new Nexus smart watches from Google, we will let you guys know.

Oculus Rift users looking for a little more comfort might be interested in a new Kickstarter campaign which has been launched this month, offering official Oculus Rift facial interfaces with replacement foam pads.

Gauss TechThe company behind the facial interfaces is offering to different versions, one of which replaces the face home and another that is slightly bigger for users that use the Rift with spectacles.

Check out the video below to learn more about how easy they are to fit, and the added comfort they can bring to your Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

We have been selling our hygiene solution for the Oculus Rift DK1 and DK2 since 2014 and now also offer our VR Cover for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift. Without VR Cover, the stock foam of your VR headset can become pretty gross and worn out over time.

Besides VR Cover, we have been offering Gear VR foam replacements since January 2016 and have begun offering them for the HTC Vive. With your help we can also bring new facial interfaces to the Oculus Rift!

For more information on the Oculus Rift facial interfaces jump over to the official Kickstarter campaign via the link below.

Oculus on Tuesday announced it is ramping up availability of its Rift virtual reality gear and planning a major conference in October for developers making software for it.

Facebook-owned Oculus said that all pre-ordered Rift headsets have been sent to buyers, and promised that new orders made online at oculus.com will ship within four business days.

“We want to apologize for the delays in getting Rifts to doorsteps,” the Oculus team said in a blog post.

Oculus began selling its Rift virtual reality headsets earlier this year for $599, a price which does not include the cost of a computer that can handle the processing and graphics demands of the technology.

Oculus is also increasing inventory at US shops, saying that people should be able to get their hands on Rift at select Microsoft stores and demo the headsets at hundreds of Best Buy retail outlet locations.

The company announced it will hold a three-day annual Oculus Connect developers conference in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose beginning on October 5.

Alibaba Group on Thursday launched a first-of-its-kind “Internet-connected car” that can be scaled up for mass production in the near future.

The YunOS-enabled car named “OS’Car RX5” has been developed in collaboration with SAIC Motor Corporation.

“YunOS for cars” is a smart operating system from AlibabaGroup which is tailor-made for the automotive industry, the company said in a statement.

The car has advanced fuel technology, more powerful accelerator, lower oil consumption and have a shorter braking distance.

With cloud-based data, YunOS provides OS’Car RX5 drivers with a series of innovative features like an intelligent map.

The car is able to take direct commands through smart voice control, creating a more natural and safer driving environment. Audio is the primary mode for controlling the system.

Equipped with up to four detachable action cameras, it enables video recordings of the journey and 360-degree in-car selfies.

The selfies can be shared instantly with friends via the connected smartphone.

As the first car with an “Internet ID”, the car can recognise the driver through connected smartphones or smartwatches. It also enables personalised Internet services such as greetings, preferred music and destinations.

“YunOS will make cars an even more indispensable part of human life in the future society. Today marks the dawn of that new era. We feel proud and privileged to be playing a part in driving that change,” said Jack Ma, Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group.

The car is currently available for sale for CNY 99,800 – CNY 186,800 (Rs. 10,07,240 – Rs. 18,85,295).

OS’Car RX5 uses an open platform for different smart hardware and services which will enable the introduction of additional premium and creative driving experiences for users.

Cybercriminals can easily exploit wearable devices such as smartwatches and fitness trackers to steal sensitive information like your ATM PIN or passwords for electronic door locks, warns a new study.

“Wearable devices can be exploited. Attackers can reproduce the trajectories of the user’s hand and recover secret key entries to ATM cash machines, electronic door locks and keypad-controlled enterprise servers,” said Yan Wang from Binghamton University in the US.

The researchers combined data from embedded sensors in wearable technologies such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, along with a computer algorithm to crack private PINs and passwords with 80 percent accuracy on the first try and more than 90 percent accuracy after three efforts.

The team conducted 5,000 key-entry tests on three key-based security systems, including an ATM, with 20 adults wearing a variety of technologies over 11 months.

They were able to record millimetre-level information of fine-grained hand movements from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometres inside the wearable technologies regardless of a hand’s pose.

Those measurements lead to distance and direction estimations between consecutive keystrokes, which the team’s “Backward PIN-sequence Inference Algorithm” used to break codes with alarming accuracy without context clues about the keypad.

“The threat is real, although the approach is sophisticated,” Wang said in the paper presented at the “11th ACM on Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security” conference in China recently.

The researchers did not give a solution for the problem but suggest that developers “inject a certain type of noise to data so it cannot be used to derive fine-grained hand movements, while still being effective for fitness tracking purposes such as activity recognition or step counts”.

Wang co-authored the study along with Chen Wang from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

Last week, reports of Google making two of its own Android Wear smartwaches surfaced online, and now leaked images of the two wearables have made their way to the Web. The previous report tipped that the two smartwatches have been codenamed Angelfish and Swordfish, and are expected to launch after the Nexus devices in fall this year.

The images have been leaked by Android Police, and it warns that the smartwatches have been recreated, in order to keep the source anonymous. The report asserts that the image is an ‘accurate representation’ of the leak, however it does not guarantee that the final product may look the same.

Angelfish is the high-end variant of the two smartwatches, and will be significantly larger and thicker than the Swordfish variant. The build includes a distinct crown button on the left, with small shoulder button on top and bottom. The display dons the customisable watchface of Android Wear 2.0 demoed at Google I/O this year. Apparently, Angelfish will not be compatible with Android Wear Mode watch bands i.e. no removable straps. The smartwatch will come with cellular connectivity (support GPS and LTE) to have the capacity to run standalone without pairing with a smartphone.

Swordfish is a significantly smaller smartwatch, with a single button protruding to the left. The report states that Google has tried to tackle the flat-tyre design issue by incorporating a thick bezel between the display and ring, making the display screen much smaller. There is a black gap before the display begins, which effectively removes Motorola’s flat tyre design, but makes the display look much small. Swordfish will be compatible with Android Wear Mode watch bands. It will not support GPS and LTE, and may not even include a heart rate monitor.

There is no word on the branding of these smartwatches. Whether Google is calling it Nexus, Pixel, or even just Google is not yet known. The pricing, exact availability, or technical spec details also remain undisclosed. In any case, we recommend that you take all of this with a pinch of salt, until Google releases official word.